Michigan, US – 6th June, 2018: A terminal cancer patient given months to live after seven types of chemotherapy failed has been 'cured' by a 'miracle' injection.
Judy Perkins is the first woman in the world to have her breast cancer completely eradicated using a pioneering technique to turbo charge her immune system.
Experts believe the 52-year-old’s case could offer a blueprint to help the body’s natural defences eradicate other cancers.
The mother-of-two had tumors the size of plums in her liver after cancer spread throughout her body but a few months later they had vanished.
Judy said: “I had a tumor pressing on a nerve which meant I spent my time trying not to move at all to avoid pain shooting down my arm. I had given up fighting.
“I had resigned my job and was planning on dying. I couldn’t do anything which I had enjoyed before and I didn’t want it to continue.
“I wanted to get dying over with. I had a bucket list of things I needed to do before the end, like going to the Grand Canyon.
“But within two weeks I could feel the tumors in my chest wall shrinking and I started to feel better. Now I have gone back to normal everyday life.
“The doctors were beaming at the results. They were practically tap dancing with happiness.”
The case has been discussed by experts at the world’s biggest cancer conference in Chicago and published in the journal Nature Medicine.
Scientists led by the National Cancer Institute in the US analyzed a biopsy of Judy’s tumor.
They worked out a way to identify the 23% of her white blood cells able to attack her particular cancer.
A small number of the T-cells were removed and grown in their billions and re-injected to beef up her immune system.
Called adoptive cell transfer, it is the first time it has been used to wipe out breast cancer and could be available to more patients in five years.
Author Dr Steven Rosenberg said: “This patient came to us in a desperate situation with every treatment having failed.
“The breakthrough here is in finding an approach able to identify the T-cells which target genetic mutations and in being able to grow them to this number.”
Speaking at the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Dr Michael Sabel, chief of surgical oncology at the University of Michigan, said: “This represents a paradigm shift.
“We have been struggling in getting the immune system to recognize cancer for many years, especially for some types of cancer."
He added: “This lays out a pathway and you could apply this to many different types of tumor.
"That’s what’s very exciting.”
Judy was first diagnosed with breast cancer in the lining of her ducts in 2003 and had a mastectomy then, before the cancer returned a decade later.
She went through seven types of chemotherapy and another experimental drug trial before running out of options.
In December 2015, she found out the cancer had spread to her liver, as well as lymph nodes in her chest wall and abdomen.
Judy’s lesions had completely disappeared within a year of treatment.
Judy, an engineer from Florida, who has since taken up kayaking and mountain climbing, added: "I was hoping to see my sons graduate from high school and I thought about missing out on their weddings and grandchildren.
"I knew they would be okay, but I was planning how to die with dignity and how to show them it wasn't scary."
She added: "It feels miraculous and I'm beyond amazed that I have now been free of cancer for two years.
Dr Simon Vincent, director at Breast Cancer Now, said: “This is a remarkable and extremely promising result, but we need to see this effect repeated in other patients before giving hope of a new immunotherapy for incurable metastatic breast cancer.
“This is a hugely exciting first in the treatment of advanced breast cancer.
"But it has only been shown to work in a single patient and we now need larger trials to investigate."
Source: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/terminal-cancer-patient-cured-miracle-12645563